


Pendulum

by unwiselines



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Mutual Pining, pre-reveal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14331195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwiselines/pseuds/unwiselines
Summary: Adrien returns to Paris after six years, and - as fate decrees - Marinette is there to welcome him home.





	1. Homegoing

Pale twilight was falling when Adrien stepped from the sleek black Audi. Endless streams of people flowed through the streets, parting fluidly around him. Laughing, chattering, gesticulating, or silent. With phones pressed to their ears or glowing faces cast eagerly around the illuminated street. With friends and lovers or comfortably alone.

 _Paris_. A flutter in his lungs.

No, deeper. His soul, maybe, or that consecrated place inside him given only to _her_.

The car door slammed. Adrien dragged his rapturous face back from his surroundings and focused on the man beside him. Tall, slender, with a uniform hat pulled snugly over his brow and a tailored suit clinging to his sloping shoulders. The expression on his face spoke of boredom and expertly masked restlessness.

"Anything in the boot, sir?" the driver asked in deferential monotone.

"No. Just this." Adrien tilted his jaw to the black strap of his bag slung over one shoulder. From his pocket, he extracted his wallet and rifled through a sea of yuan. "Ah! Here it is."

He pressed the crisp hundred note into the driver's hand and thanked him vaguely for his services, but his mind was already wandering back to the cacophony of commerce and nightlife.

Back to his home.

The air was cool, the barest trace of humidity lingering from the day. After nearly twenty-seven hours breathing recycled oxygen and the staleness of international airports, the scent of his city blew Adrien's pupils wide with adoration.

He inhaled deeply.

The sharp mineral tang of sun-baked stone streets. Swirling eddies of perfume and cologne clinging to warm skin. Fresh, damp soil.

Food in a dozen permutations: yeasty, fragrant with garlic and spice, the cloying assault of heated sugar, the sharp and complex aroma of uncorked red wine.

Overwhelmed, his chest tight with emotion, Adrien let out a trembling exhale and began to walk.

It felt glorious to do it. The flight from Beijing had taken its toll on his body, even flying first class. Too long spent crammed awkwardly into a rigid seat, spine curved over his adjustable wooden tray table as he attempted to drown out his surroundings with a book.

Not even the latest Franzen was quite up to the task. Especially not with that brutal layover in Abu Dhabi.

He walked briskly, one hand in his pocket and the other curled loosely around the strap of his bag, glorying in the stretch and strain in his thighs and calves. The tension in his shoulders and neck began to unwind; his jaw loosened from a clench he hadn't realized he'd been sustaining.

He didn't even look to see where he was going. His feet just set off, automatic, on those well-trod paths a younger Adrien had etched into the instinctual memory of muscle and sinew.

They carried him almost three miles before he stepped deftly from the coursing river of pedestrians, into a shaded alcove beside a tailor's shop. An apartment overhead had a planter's box spilling vines with waxy green leaves hanging almost low enough for him to reach up and touch.

Already the night had deepened, and all down the street were merry little shop fronts and vendor carts radiating a soft yellow light.

Six years. God, it had been so long.

He passed a hand over his face, betraying the emotion he hadn't yet allowed to consume him. The smallest tremble. An itch on his bare finger where a thick, flat ring used to rest.

What he wouldn't give to shed his skin right now. To taste the sharp, whistling bite of wind against his bared teeth. To feel the slick slide of roof tiles under the flexible leather soles of his boots.

What he wouldn't give to be springing, soaring through his city towards his Lady.

A bright burble of laughter brought him back to himself as a gaggle of young women passed. Their heels clicked against the stone sidewalk, silvery jewelry tinkling as it swayed on earlobes and wrists. Adrien let his hand drop heavily to his side and returned a bland and vacant smile to the appraising looks they gave him.

Mercifully, they didn't recognize him.

It had been a long time since Adrien Agreste frequented the billboards of Paris. But one didn't lose one's status as national darling quite so easily.

A great rumble began deep in stomach, reminding him it had been nearly ten hours since he'd forced down some dry, pitiful blueberry muffin while on layover. He never could manage to eat more than a handful or two of nuts while in the air. Adrien realized quite abruptly that he was absolutely famished.

He wasn't in the mood to sit, so he ordered a burger from one of the first food stalls he saw and ate it walking, ravenous and graceless. When he was done, he mopped up the oil on his hands and lips and tossed the soiled napkin into a nearby trashcan. Then he set off in a random direction.

It was the group of pointing tourists that drew his attention to it: the Eiffel Tower.

Or at least, the uppermost portion of it, spearing through the night sky like a fiery beacon above the terraces and mansard rooftops.

It felt like a fist had walloped him straight in the gut. He stopped mid-stride, nearly causing a collision. The effusive string of apologies he offered left his mouth in Mandarin on instinct, and before he had time to switch back to his native tongue, the offended party had already disappeared into the crowd.

Feeling flustered, a little chemically unstable, Adrien straddled the lip of the curb with his soles, placing himself just out of the slipstream.

It had always seemed a little unfair, that he had to share this monument with hundreds of millions of others. As mere children it had been a daring adventure to claim the Tower as their own, to scale it with the grace and preternatural strength of their newfound powers.

Now, Adrien rather wished they’d gone more obscure. A touchstone more intimate, hallowed. Something just the two of them shared. Like a secret, an inside joke.

“Adrien?”

The voice faltered uncertainly. When he turned to meet it, his expression had already glossed over with that studied politeness drilled into him since near-infancy.

Then he saw the woman’s face, and a portion of him reconfigured to make room for his joy.

“Marinette,” he breathed.

His smile burst forth, so wide and effusive he had half a mind to be embarrassed.

Marinette seemed to be. Her fingers fidgeted with the chain of her sleek crossbody purse; she had one foot bent at an awkward, dithering sort of angle, as if she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have to bolt at the first sign of stilted small-talk.

But he was so _delighted_ to see her, none of that mattered. Without thought, he stepped forward and embraced her.

She hugged him back with real warmth, her palm cool and soft at the nape of his neck and a little puff of surprised breath exhaled between them.

“I thought it was you,” she said after they pulled away. “Nino mentioned you might . . .” Her shoulders pulled up, closer to her ears, and she adjusted the strap of her purse. “It’s crazy, running into you like this.”

“I know.” He couldn’t seem to wipe that stupid grin off his face, couldn’t stop staring at her as though she were an oasis in the middle of a desert. _Marinette_. Sounding like the same sweet spring day she had always sounded like and looking even better than one. “I didn’t think I was around your place . . . I must have spaced out completely.”

“Oh! You must mean my parents’. I don’t live there anymore.”

“Of course. It’s . . . I mean, you’re twenty-four. That makes sense.”

He chuckled awkwardly, swiping his hand along the back of his neck. The collar of his shirt was hopelessly wilted. He couldn’t imagine the state of his skin. Waxen, brow oily, bags under his eyes. His dermatologist would probably fall into a dead faint at the sight of him.

But his slip seemed to soften her. When she spoke next, her words carried a bit more confidence.

“I rent a studio a few blocks away.” She paused. Her teeth worried her bottom lip at the right corner, a tick she’d retained since their schooldays. “Do you . . . I mean, do you want to come back and have some coffee with me? N-No pressure, or anything, I know you must have just arrived. You probably have tons to do.”

She fluttered a nervous hand in the air between them, as if already making his excuses for him. The gesture was so typically _Marinette_ , Adrien could say nothing except:

“I’d love to.”

Adrien fell into step beside her, walking slowly to account for her smaller stature. They spoke lightly about his travel: what connecting flights he’d taken, if he’d watched any good films on the plane, whether there had been any screaming children in his near vicinity (one brief incident with a spilled apple juice and then silence).

As they strolled, Adrien let himself notice her.

She’d always had a lovely face. Heart-shaped, with high cheekbones and a delicate, pointed chin. Much of the rounded softness of youth had left it in their late teens, and the result had been strikingly pretty. Somehow, that had only enhanced as she matured. The curve of her neck seemed more elegant; the tilt of her lips at once gentler and more coquettish; the angle of her thin black brows self-possessed and a little teasing.

She wore her hair long, and tonight it spilled like ink from a high ponytail, her fringe pushed back from her forehead with a thin silver headband. The model in him couldn’t help but note her clothes were chic and well-tailored. The blouse and light jacket she wore looked custom-made.

“When did you move?” he asked, to keep the conversation from a lull.

“Oh, about a year ago. Alya and I lived together for a few months, but . . . ah. You heard about . . .?”

“The breakup? Yeah. The reverberations were felt around the world, trust me.”

Marinette grimaced. “It was pretty bad, wasn’t it? They’d been together so long . . . Anyway, it just got to be a little much, the whole,” her hand fluttered again, this time searchingly, “soul-searching thing.”

“You mean her new lovers were wearing their welcome thin.”

“It’s not that she wasn’t _entitled_ to do that,” Marinette rushed to clarify. “ _I_ don’t care. I was very supportive! I just had a lot of work to do on my new business, and Alya was working as the web admin, and the whole relationship just got a little . . . squishy. If that makes sense.”

“Totally. Things are better now, right?”

“Things are _great_. Sometimes, no matter how much you love somebody, you just aren’t prepared to live with them.”

“A very sage realization,” Adrien teased. “You sound practically adult.”

She wagged a finger at him. “Hey, that wisdom was hard-won. Anyway, I need to feel like an adult whenever possible. I’m hopeless at filing my taxes.”

The accompanying sigh was dramatic enough to steal a laugh from both of them.

They walked for only another block or two before they reached a quaint brick building set off the main streets. A black, wrought-iron gate sectioned off the neatly-manicured squares of lawn out front. The planter boxes at each window overflowed with seasonal blooms. An old-fashioned cobbler’s shop took up the bottommost floor, its lights dark and the bars pulled secure over the entrance.

Marinette led him around the side, up two flights of rickety metal stairs, and through a flaking white door on the third and topmost floor.

“The unit below me is a studio, too, but I’ve never seen who lives there,” she said as she hustled around the room, flicking on an eclectic array of mismatched lamps. “Sometimes they wake me up playing the violin in the middle of the night.”

“Do they at least have the decency to play it well?”

“Yes, actually. But at three in the morning, Corelli himself could be playing and I’d _still_ want to break his violin over my knee.”

Adrien laughed, but his attention had fractured.

There was just so _much._

Light, color, pattern. Nothing matched and yet everything complemented, from the low-slung turquoise sofa to the cascading curtains in silvery voile; from the burnished copper end tables to the tiered planters dangling from the ceiling. Bookshelves lined the entirety of the wall containing the front door, packed with spines thick with the blocky text of fashion portfolios or flaking around some tawdry title like _The Coming of Duke Lancaster._ A desk in the ascetic Swedish style was pushed against the largest window with a vibrantly pink Mac sitting atop. About half a dozen mannequins in varying states of stylish undress loitered in corners with their ghostly arms posed, as if mid-conversation.

A perilous metal staircase curved in a helix to the loft above the living area. Gauzy curtains had been hung from the ceiling to emulate the privacy of walls.

For some reason, the sight of them drew blood into Adrien’s cheeks.

He turned quickly away, casting his eyes around for some innocuous objects upon which to fixate. It didn’t take long.

Photographs of joyous, familiar faces punctuated the elegant furnishings. Juleka and Rose in their wedding finery, a beaming Marinette swallowed in Rose’s embrace with Luka mussed and laughing at his sister’s side. A dozen Alya’s: alone in Tokyo with her trademarked, shit-eating grin on her face; with Nino aboard one of those ridiculous tourist paddle boats on the Seine, both of them sun-blushed; with Marinette in their bathing suits and comically large sunglasses. Marinette’s parents, separate or alone, also featured prominently.

And then – himself.

A sight one might expect a model to become accustomed to, but there you have it.

Adrien drew back as if speared through the heart. Not just because of his gauche _youngness_ , the smallness of his adolescent body, but because . . .

Because he looked so fucking _happy_.

It was a snapshot of the four of them – he, Marinette, Nino, and Alya. They were crowded around a much-too-small, verdigrised metal table, with little cardboard boats of melting ice cream sundaes sitting atop it. Nino had one arm slung around Alya’s shoulders, drawing her into his languid orbit. Marinette held her spoon daintily between thumb and forefinger, mid-brandish, her expression caught in a surprised _moue._

Adrien was one of the only ones looking directly at the camera, ready for it. It had been _his_ idea to ask the passerby to immortalize the moment. It had seemed quite critical.

Fifteen years old, with a magical talisman shining silver on his hand and his dearest friends surrounding him.

Maybe even then, in the fleeting sweetness of that moment, he had known it could never last.

Metal striking against metal, the screech of a faucet. Marinette bustled around the cramped half-kitchen. She’d shed her crossbody on the sofa.

“How do you like it?” she asked absently. In the narrow sink, her hands swirled deftly around the rim of a coffee mug amidst many frothing bubbles.

“I-I’m sorry?”

They blinked at one another across the room.

Marinette pointed a dripping finger towards the sleek coffee machine taking up approximately seventy-two percent of her available counter space.

“Um, coffee? How do you like your – your coffee?”

“Oh! I apologize. A bit of cream, please.”

Marinette worried her bottom lip. “It isn’t . . . weird, is it? That I still have that old photo of us?”

“No. I was just admiring it.”

“You _looked_ like you wanted to run away,” she pointed out softly. “If it makes you uncomfortable, I can pack it up. Honest.”

“ _No_. Really, no. I didn’t expect to see myself in . . .”

Adrien swallowed, suddenly unsure of just what he meant to say. He didn’t expect to see himself in one of the happiest periods of his life? Didn’t expect to see himself with Chat Noir humming vibrant just beneath his skin?

“. . . in the throes of punkish adolescence. That’s all.”

A dubious shadow lurked behind Marinette’s eyes, but she dropped the subject and returned to preparing their drinks. Every so often, an urgent _buzz-ping-buzz_ issued from her phone and she paused to tap out some sort of reply. The coffee machine gurgled and spat.

Adrien set down his backpack and found a seat on the turquoise sofa beside a cluster of brightly beaded throw pillows. He tried to look a little _less_ at home. A strange compulsion, considering he usually felt chronically ill-at-ease when visiting the homes of acquaintances for the first time.

Marinette didn’t quite fit into the _acquaintance_ category, though. Not with their long history. Nor could he rightly claim her as _friend_ – even with that photograph like a relic on her wall – when he knew so very little about the details of her current life.

“I like this place,” he said. “It has your charm.”

“Is that a polite way to tell me that it’s a pigsty?” she teased. The coffee machine was grinding its way through the final stages of its brewing cycle.

“That would be ‘ _Oh, how charm_ ing’ _._ It’s all in the – _ing_ , see.”

“ _Right_ , how silly of me. This is what happens when I go too long without seeing Chloe. Totally lose my flair for the intricacies of backhanded compliments.”

“I think I’ve got a guidebook somewhere . . . I keep it next to my scale and all the tabloid articles counting the creases in my crow’s feet.”

Marinette laughed. Another _buzz-ping-buzz_ vibrated her phone, but she left it alone as she poured their coffee. Her refrigerator was half-sized; she had to crouch to retrieve the cream from its narrow shelf. Adrien saw a flash of leafy green herbs, a plump red tomato, and a small pastry box before the door shut. Little clues, flashes of mundane intimacy, that he hoarded in his mind like a sad and friendless dragon.

Adrien took the coffee from Marinette gratefully then realized that there were very few additional places to sit in her tiny apartment. Just as he was beginning to unsettle the pillows in the hope to flatten himself against the far end of the sofa, Marinette waved her free hand and told him not to bother. She placed her cup on the nearest end table and dragged up a stout velvet footrest from where it had been acting as a magazine table.

They sipped their coffee quietly. Every few seconds, their eyes would flick up beyond the rim of their mugs and catch the other pair looking, and smiles both apologetic and somehow restless would make wordless excuses.

“I’ve looked at your website,” Adrien admitted finally. “Alya told me about it.”

Marinette tucked a strand of glossy black hair behind her ear. She wore a set of dangling silver earrings in the shape of daggers, with a moonstone at each hilt.

A strange swooping sensation traveled through his stomach. He had the impression, very sudden and consuming, that he had never seen in her in a pair of earrings before.

But that wasn’t true, was it? Didn’t she _always_ wear earrings?

A buzzing headache pounded behind his eyes. It lasted only a few seconds, but when it passed, he’d forgotten his line of thought.

Marinette hadn’t noticed his discomfort; she’d been too busy _not_ looking at him. “Y-Yeah. It’s, um, doing pretty well. Sales are up fifteen percent from last quarter. Alya had the idea to do an ad campaign on the old Ladyblog. You’d be surprised by how many people still subscribe to the forums.”

“I still do,” Adrien said without thinking. Marinette took a hasty sip of her mug and fixated on a spot beyond his right shoulder. “Sort of out of nostalgia, you know?”

“Yeah. I guess I do.”

“Anyway, Ladybug makes an appearance every once in a while. It’s worth it.”

Perhaps nobody else in the entire world understood exactly precious those rare resurfacings were to Adrien. To see Ladybug for even a few minutes, springing to the rescue of civilians during some catastrophe or other, sent his heart into rapid, ecstatic convulsions.

“Maybe you’re right,” Marinette replied. She was fiddling with her dagger earring distractedly, her eyes distant. “Can I ask you something?”

Adrien’s heart leapt, but he nodded. Even years later, something in him still jumped to attention whenever there was the barest threat of discovery. A foolish instinct for self-preservation kicked into gear; his mind began spinning through hasty rebuttals suitable for the accusatory, “ _Were you Chat Noir_?”

Stupid, of course. Nobody knew. Nobody would ever know that it had been him.

Especially not now . . . now that he was nothing.

“You’ve done a lot of traveling,” Marinette began tentatively.

“A fair amount. Nothing prolific.”

“But enough. I always wondered – well, what other countries thought of it all. Ladybug and Chat Noir, I mean. And everything they stood against, the – the akumas. I mean, to anybody else, it had to seem _crazy_. Like a fantasy.”

“They mostly think it was all some huge publicity stunt. For a movie franchise or, um, some sort of comic series? Stuff like that.” Adrien swallowed a mouthful of his coffee, surprised to find his mug half-empty already. “Don’t get me wrong, there are a few devout believers. I’m told my fan mail got a little intense after . . . um. You know. After everything.”

He raked his fingers through his hair compulsively, dismayed to find it completely wild. He’d ran a comb through it cursorily in the plane bathroom, what – seven hours ago? He probably looked a mess.

If he expected Marientte to say anything about his father, to pry, he would have been entirely mistaken. Not that he _did_. No matter how mournful her eyes were, no matter how soft her mouth became, he knew she wouldn’t knife at that sort of wound.

Alya might have. Nino would have rounded the subject carefully, cloaked with video games and craft beer, until Adrien was in the right state of mind to break down and unload a few things.

But not Marinette. Marinette only stared at him with such sadness and understanding, Adrien felt on the utter verge of spilling every agonized secret.

“D’you have a bathroom?” He winced, redirected. “Sorry, of course you have a bathroom. I meant: may I use your bathroom?”

“Sure. In the hall behind the shell curtain.”

Once inside, Adrien splashed water on his face and finger-combed his hair into some semblance of respectability. Even after, he still looked ghastly. All angles, his cheekbones too prominent, his skin stretched thin. Against the paleness of his complexion, his green eyes were unsettling – almost feral.

He rinsed his mouth, which had gone bone-dry and stale from the coffee. He wished he had a mint or something.

When he rejoined Marinette, he had regained some composure. Enough to change the subject smoothly, as if they hadn’t skirted around the reason he’d left the country in disgrace.

“Anyway, I meant to say that I bought one of your designs.”

“R-Really? Oh, Adrien, you didn’t have to –”

He smiled as he settled back into the seat opposite her. “I wanted to. It was an exclusive item from your winter collection, that wool overcoat with the copper buttons and that sick Victorian silhouette –”

“ _Oh_ ,” she squeaked, clapping a hand over her mouth. “I-I remember tailoring that to somebody with your measurements.”

“You know my measurements?” he teased.

Thoughtlessly, apparently; the comment sent Marinette into a babbling tailspin reminiscent of the earliest days of their friendship.

“A-Ah, that is, I only _really_ know very _broad –_ well, and your model profile – public domain – we all looked at it every once in a – _Alya_ was really the one who brought it up, and –”

 She guzzled down the remainder of her coffee.

“Um,” said Adrien, “it was a very nice coat.”

“Thank you,” she squeaked again, though this time with an edge of exasperation. The cherry flush in her cheeks began to recede second by second. “I – how did it last? I had some reservations about the stitching around the shoulders . . ?”

“No way. I wore it for two straight years. It drove my stylist _nuts_ , but I got tons of compliments on it. I still have it.”

“I’m so happy you liked it.”

The joyous radiance she exuded did complicated things to his throat. Adrien coughed into the crook of his arm and tried not to look directly at her.

“Would you like to see my recent sketches? If you don’t have to go right away?”

“Absolutely! I don’t have anywhere to be.”

A crinkle appeared between Marinette’s eyebrows. “You don’t have to check in to your hotel?”

“I haven’t got one yet.”

“Not very forward thinking of you. It is _Paris._ And spring.”

“Yeah, but I’m a famous model with a very exclusive credit card. You’d be amazed how often I can walk into a place and get whatever I want.”

Her eyebrows curved upward, a little tauntingly. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you talk like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . privileged. Haughty.”

“I’m not _haughty_ ,” he protested. His words _had_ come across as pompous, hadn’t they? The last thing he wanted was for Marinette to think he’d morphed into some braggadocios dickwad while away. Heat rose to his cheeks. “It’s just the reality of my situation.”

“I know. We hid in a fountain together after your fragrance ad dropped, remember?” Marinette smiled. “It’s probably long overdue that you enjoy a few perks of the job.”

A vision of Marinette looking soft and very pink in a pair of pajamas sprang to the forefront of his mind.

Everything about that day had been surreal. His frenzied crowd of admirers, rushing through the streets at Marinette’s side, the free-fall.

Ladybug saving him at the last moment, as he never doubted she would. The sensation of her suit-fabric against his civilian skin, half-rubber and half-silk.

A bright pain pierced him just beneath his diaphragm.

“We were talking about sketches?”

“Oh – yes.”

Again, the corners of her mouth bent in such a way that Adrien knew she worried for him.

She fetched a large, flat sketchbook from the loft, scaling the steps with the sort of grace only hundreds of accumulated toe-stubs afforded a person.

With the sketchbook in hand, she sat gingerly beside him, pushing away her discarded crossbody. Their thighs touched.

Adrien cleared his throat and focused on her art.

It was _good_. Very good.

The designs had such elegance, such neat symmetry and attention to form, but every single one maintained the whimsical flair that set Marinette’s style apart. In the jaunty angle of a jacket collar, in the striking layering of a gown, in the flirty patterning of a skirt’s pockets – her energy practically burst from the pages.  

“Your line work is beautiful,” he breathed. He traced a finger over one of the male figures dressed in a dandyish suit of plum purple. “I could buy these and frame them.”

“You really mean it?”

“Marinette, these are _great_ designs. You’re so talented.”

When he looked up, he found himself practically nose-to-nose with his old friend.

They’d grown so near, bending over the sketchbook balanced between them. He could smell the coffee on her lips. He could see the freckles on her nose.

On the trembling wavelength of her inhale, Adrien heard something of his own emotions resonating.

“It’s so good to see you again.”

It could have been either of them who said it. This time, it was her.

Adrien found that he couldn’t speak.

“Are you . . .?” A small hitch in her breathing. “Are you staying in Paris? Indefinitely?”

Even if he had a return ticket in his back pocket, Adrien didn’t think he’d have been able to say anything other than, “Yes.”

Her smile had all the vibrancy of dawnlight, of crisp white sundresses and yellow umbrellas.

Above the smooth, thick parchment paper of her sketchbook, she slipped her hand into his and squeezed, once, in answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't posted any fic in about fifty years, so this is an exercise just as much as it is a compulsion. And honestly? I don't really know what the goal is! I wanted Adrien and Marinette aged up and sort of just . . . talking, y'know. At least for now ;) 
> 
> Apologies if approximately none of this is novel. My hope is that it strikes the fancy of one reader, at least. 
> 
> Credit for the fanon popular theory that ~magic~ keeps the identities of these two goobers mostly hidden (because honestly, HOW are you supposed to realistically justify that sort of obliviousness, otherwise?) goes to fics like “Back to Us” by DarkReyna16, and some others that I no longer remember . . . point being, the theory did not originate with me.


	2. Aubade

The steady _plink_ of water droplets striking the ceramic basin of her bathtub filled Marinette’s apartment. It splashed in that arrhythmic way . . . the sort that suggested the water was sluicing unevenly over the valleys and plateaus of a body.

She kicked the blankets off her legs and sighed in relief when cool air caressed her skin. Sweat lingered in a thin film at the backs of her knees and beneath her breasts. Even with her hair up, her neck was hot and itchy.

Maybe she would chop it all off soon. The hair.

Experimentally, she gathered up the thick tendrils springing free of their elastic ties. She curled them around the top of her head like a crown and looked at her reflection in the dark surface of her cell phone.

A text came through, shattering her moment of speculative narcissism.  

**Alya 08:12**

_u up?_

She didn’t usually ignore her friends. Not on purpose. She figured after lying to their faces for nearly half a decade, the least she could do was spare a few seconds to chat. Even when busy, or when it inconvenienced her.

A silly penance, but one she practiced diligently.  

But right now, Marinette didn’t have it in her to engage. Not even cursorily.

There were great battles happening on the razed landscape of her heart. Little cedar boxes in the attic of her mind were being tragically unlocked, and from those boxes a great quantity of fruitless yearning threatened to spill.

Six years, and all Adrien Agreste had to do was smile at her and she was ruined.

She closed her eyes and remembered how she’d found him last night. Staring, stricken, at a mundane sliver of the Eiffel Tower. 

As if he had never seen it before in his life. As if he hadn’t been raised beside it. As if it wasn’t, on top of all that, one of the most cliché and overwrought symbols of so-called European elegance in existence.

That absolute _reverence_ on his beautiful face . . . God, it wasn’t _fair_.

The quaver in her resolve had warned her this would happen. The pragmatist inside her had told her to turn on her heel and walk in the opposite direction.

 _Walk quickly away from that messy and poorly-healed wound_ , Marinette. _You are not strong enough for this_ , Marinette. _Whatever you do, don’t you dare call out to him,_ Marinette.

Her inner voice still sounded like Tikki. Maybe that was why she never listened. She’d always been the worst brat when it came to heeding her kwami’s reasonable advice.

Of course she’d hailed him.

And of course, he couldn’t have just looked at her with the impatient politeness of a devastatingly handsome man trying very hard to remember some personal fact about her. One he could bring out in conversation to prove that, _See – I’ve remembered your father is a baker. I’ve absolved myself of any further responsibility regarding this awkward interaction; I will now make some falsely cheerful excuse to leave and hurry away, never to speak to you again._

No. Because that wasn’t Adrien, was it? It seemed he didn’t have it in his nature and never would, no matter how many horrible things happened to him. He was warm, and gentle, and unfailingly kind at a quantum level.

Adrien had turned his gaze on her and the honest luminescence of his happiness had spilled from his eyes like some sort of solar event. A flare that left dancing, rainbow spots imprinted on Marinette’s vision. So bright she had to blink away tears.

The pipes in the walls screeched and rattled as Adrien turned off the water.

Right about now, he’d be smoothing accumulated moisture from his gently steaming skin. Squeezing those remaining rivulets from his blond hair. Pulling back her checkered red-and-white shower curtain and reaching for his towel.

Marinette pushed the heels of her hands against her eyelids and groaned. Miserably.

Then she shimmied into the pink silk robe Alya had gotten her for her last birthday, belted it around her waist, and hurried downstairs.

By the time Adrien exited the bathroom with his white tee-shirt clinging damply to his ribs, Marinette had managed to whip up another pot of coffee and prepare some slices of warm bread with butter and blackberry jam.

“I hope this is something you eat? I imagine the diet can be strict, in your line of work. Carbs, or, um . . . something.”

Adrien slid into a seat at her miniscule breakfast table and began devouring the bread. Around mouthfuls of it, he informed her, “Well, I’m somewhat retired. So I don’t really give a shit about my figure anymore.”

Stymied, Marinette considered her options. Would he consider it intrusive if she asked a follow-up question on this choice bit of intelligence?

Chat Noir would have pulled out some aphorism about curiosity at this point, but Marinette had become very adept at exorcising the lilting ghost of his voice. Too painful.

“You’re really . . . done?”

“Really. I’m twenty-five. That’s about sixty-two, in model years.”

Marinette must have looked very skeptical because Adrien laughed. And perhaps the tabloids were on to something, because his eyes _did_ crinkle excellently at the outer corners.

She took the seat opposite him. 

“Don’t male models have an extended lifespan? Something about the way you all turn into scruffy silver foxes at thirty?”

A shrug. “Maybe. But I’m quite done with it all.” His smile faltered. “I actually don’t know how I ended up doing it for as long as I did. I mean, I didn’t even go to _college_. Talk about pathetic.”

“That’s not pathetic, Adrien,” Marinette objected firmly. “You have all the time in the world to study whatever interests you. Or nothing. My father didn’t get a degree until he was in his forties, and he only did that because he spent about four years obsessed with Ethiopian hydropolitics. There wasn’t much _else_ for him to do, given the circumstances.”

His light-brown brows rose into comical arches. “That’s sort of fascinating, actually.”

“It was very annoying, but!” Marinette brandished a finger. “You get my point. Twenty-five may be sixty-two in model years, but in _real human being_ years, you’re practically a toddler.” She dropped her chin into her cupped palm and said, “I think this is what the TV dramas mean when they use that phrase, _ripe for the taking_. That’s your life, right now, currently.”

Again, that felling softness lingered about his lips. Marinette looked quickly into the depths of her near-black coffee. A dash of sugar, that’s all she preferred. The opposite of Adrien with his splash of cream.

“You went to school, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I, um, went to the IFA.”

“What did you study?”

“I got my bachelor’s in fashion design and tech and an MBA in global fashion media.”

“That’s fantastic. No wonder you’ve become such an entrepreneur.”

Adrien sat back heavily in his too-small chair. Marinette couldn’t help but consider how _large_ he’d become. Or perhaps _broad_ was a better word for it, seeing as he was constructed solely of lean musculature and angles straight out of a Dolce  & Gabbana editorial.

“T-Thank you. But like I said, you don’t _need_ any of that.”

“I think I might want it, though. Maybe.” He dragged his fingers through his still-damp hair and offered up an apologetic grin. “Anyway, I appreciate it. Everything. Letting me crash here last night – you didn’t have to do that.”

“To be completely fair, you were already half-unconscious by the time I offered you a blanket.” At the nascent edge of his wince, Marinette rushed to clarify, “N-Not that I mind! I don’t! I just hope my teeny little couch won’t be sending you to a chiropractor.”

“Compared to the sardine cans I was smashed into for fifteen hours, it was heaven.”

Only crumbs remained of his bread. Another swallow or two and his coffee would be gone.

Which meant that he would be leaving soon. Standing, gathering up his backpack and his wallet, slipping on his leather loafers . . . and leaving.

Reason told her that she’d see him again soon. With Nino and Alya, probably.

But she wished more than anything, _anything_ , that she had some reason to make him stay.

Only she didn’t.

Because despite how lovely he was, he didn’t love her. They hadn’t – had _never_ – had that sort of relationship. They very probably never would.

It was common knowledge among friends that Adrien’s heart remained ritual in its devotion to some unknown deity. A secret he had never revealed, not even to Nino. The few, paltry hours Marinette had spent in his presence revealed that this truth persisted. Even through those long, dark years after his father’s imprisonment, he had never faltered.

What luck, and what stupidity. Whoever it was – god or goddess – that possessed Adrien Agreste’s heart . . . they held something unspeakably precious.

Whether they knew it or not, they were the luckiest bastard on the face of the earth.

“I should get going,” Adrien said.

“I know.” Marinette smiled and was surprised at how genuine it was. “You have my number, right?”

“Absolutely. I’ll text you?”

“Please. We need to get together – all four of us. Like the photo.”

Adrien turned and cast shadowed eyes on the photograph hanging on her wall.

“Yeah,” he said.

Sometimes his voice took on a layered complexity that kept Marinette wondering whether she _really_ knew anything about him. It happened now.

They stood. Marinette lingered about morosely as Adrien gathered up his belongings. She noticed he had folded up the blanket she gave him into a very neat square and draped it delicately over the back of her sofa. Even the pillows had been plumped and reorganized. This somehow made everything harder.

On the threshold to her home, Marinette stepped into his embrace for the second time in fourteen hours.

She breathed in the scent of her soap on his skin, her citrus shampoo in his hair. She let the brief but wondrous fantasy overwhelm her:

They were parting only briefly after some incandescent night together. He would kiss her as though he would never see her again and then return by nightfall to take her back into his arms.

And maybe some of the old luck remained, because he _did_ kiss her – briefly, chastely, his lips soft and dry against her cheek.

“Goodbye, Marinette.”

“Goodbye, Adrien,” she whispered. She couldn’t accomplish anything above that decibel; her wretched voice would crack. “And welcome home.”

His smile was so beatific, so heartbreakingly pure, that when Marinette closed the door, softly, between them, she pressed her brow immediately against the wood and groaned:

“ _Fuck_.”


	3. Visitation

Some twisted person had determined, decades ago, that the only thing more unsettling than housing a toy museum in a fourteenth-century royal priory was to place it directly across the street from a convent-turned-high-security federal penitentiary.

Adrien didn’t fault the repurposing of the convent. How different were nuns from prison guards, really? One could imagine that leap to be small – miniscule even. 

But an array of moon-faced ceramic dolls with eyes that blinked spastically despite being hermetically sealed behind several inches of dusty glass?

That was overkill.

He had never been a particularly superstitious man – his former relationship to the demigod of destruction notwithstanding – but this was enough to stiffen the short hairs on anybody’s neck.

That’s what he told himself, anyway. The excuse he made for the clammy sweat gathering in the creases of his palms. The reason his bowels turned to liquid and his legs to jelly.

For about the fiftieth time, he dragged his moist hands over the crisply ironed knees of his charcoal slacks and tried to stand.

And failed.

A group of tourists passed, speaking in English. They had a map the size of their combined girth spread out between them. They took turns mispronouncing _Le Corbusier_ with near-artistic savagery.

The blunt ends of their language fell on him like axe-blows through a fish tank. A muffled and reverberating impact.

The light around him was at once too thin and too thick. He could either suffocate or drown in it.

He could not feel his own lips but he could feel the fleshy weight of his uvula dangling in his throat.  

He thought he might be having a panic attack.

_Calm down_ , Adrien instructed himself firmly. With authority.

He spread his hands against the flagstones beneath him. Focused on their shape, their texture, their temperature. He repeated the names of all of his friends, and then their birthdays, and then their physical characteristics.

Gradually his pulse slowed. The world solidified around him, quaintly monastic.

From his backpack, he retrieved a compact and a comb. With a sort of ritual numbness, he brushed his hair into a gleaming wave of gold and powdered his skin into some semblance of matte. Then he stood, brushed off his pants, and strode purposefully to the entrance of the penitentiary.

Adrien handed his visitation permit to a severe woman switching between at least five active phone lines. She took his paperwork and personal identification without looking, pressed a flashing button, and said, “Central House of Poissy, please hold” into the receiver.

The cursory scan of his documentation sparked some sort of recognition. Adrien saw her shoulders tense. A pair of sharp brown eyes peered down a long nose.

“M. Agreste,” the woman welcomed. Her tone had gone sultry in seconds, as though she had pressed some flashing button in her throat labeled ‘Bedroom Voice’. “Everything appears to be in order. You may proceed to the visitor passage to your left. You will be subjected to a full-body scan with a metal detector. Your person will be physically inspected, above the clothing, for weapons, drugs, or other contraband. Your belongings will be sent through the X-ray baggage controller and stored in a secure unit until such time as your visit is concluded. Should you object to these terms, the administration is at leave to deny your visitation request. Do you understand and agree to these conditions?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. To your left, please.” With a final, hungry look, she turned back to her phone, pressed another flashing button, and said, “Central House of Poissy, please hold.”

The walls were an off-beige color and echoed terribly. When he reached the first set of security guards, he followed their terse commands with the same mute pliability he possessed on photo shoots.

_Stand here, hands here, left leg out a little farther –just there_.

He felt hands on his ankles, his thighs, in his pockets. Then a pat on his back and an “All clear. Follow me.”

More echoes through long corridors. They passed about five dozen doors of the exact same solid metal material before finally halting in front of one.

One of the guards waved a badge past the electronic reader and a loud, abrasive _buzz_ crackled through the air. Adrien winced.

“Time starts now,” the other guard said. “You have two hours of unobserved socialization as agreed to by the –”

“I’ll be thirty minutes.”

The guards cast a surreptitious glance at each other. Then they swung open the door.

Gabriel Agreste sat with his hands folded serenely atop a wooden table.

Adrien swore, looking at him, that he could still feel one of those hands curled around his throat.

“Son. It’s been quite some time.”

Swore he could still feel his own voice as it cracked around his pleas.

“Well?” A dash of impatience. “Are you going to come inside?”

Adrien stepped forward. The door creaked on its hinges as it closed, heavily, behind him.

The UVF parlor was Spartan in its furnishings: a small kitchen with a sink, half-fridge, and electric stovetop; a sofa of the same make as those sitting in the visitor’s lobby; a particleboard bookshelf crammed with non-inflammatory texts; a few well-worn board game boxes stacked atop an end table; and a wooden table surrounded by four chairs.

The last time he saw his father’s pale blue eyes, he’d been eighteen years old.

The last time he saw his father, he’d been Chat Noir.

At least at first. For a while.

Until the end.

“Adrien.” Sharp, dictatorial. The sort of tone that made spines straighten. “Sit down.”

Adrien sat.

He could feel his uvula again. The air was beginning to soup.

“Much better. More civilized, hm? I notice you’re wearing Saint Laurent. Not my taste, but it has always favored your physique.”

“I wish I could say the same, Father, but standard-issue prison regalia just doesn’t suit you.”

This was not strictly true. Gabriel Agreste may have been without the armor of his expertly-crafted designer wardrobe, but he looked no less a viper in pea-green cotton. From his regal posture to his peerless platinum bouffant, he remained the same statuesque mogul of Adrien’s childhood.

But Adrien also knew that the lack of such luxuries – the separation from his hard-earned lifeblood, his precious brand – had to be a point of great frustration for his father.

Whether the jab struck home or not, Adrien couldn’t discern. His father merely smiled very thinly.

“When did you arrive back from Beijing?”

No need to ask how he knew where Adrien had been living these past six years. Every gossip mag east of England ran some scintillating story about his life once or twice a month.

“Recently.”

“And you chose to consecrate this joyous return by visiting me for the first time in half a decade? How kind of you.”

Adrien turned his face away. “I don’t know what this is, but it isn’t kindness.”

“Perhaps it is masochism. Or martyrdom. Both of which you have quite the affinity for.”

A muscle in Adrien’s jaw worked. He felt instinctually that his teeth would ache tomorrow. “Better a martyr than a villain.”

“There is a very _thin_ line between the two, Adrien.”

“He says, from _prison_.”

“And whose fault,” said Gabriel, his words slicing between them, “is that?”

A disbelieving laugh left Adrien’s throat before he remembered to be afraid.

“I can’t believe – no, never mind. What am I thinking? Of course you blame all this –” he jabbed a hand at their pathetic cell of a parlor meant to house reunited families, “on me. It isn’t like you spent four years trying to tear apart the very fabric of the universe or anything.”

“I suppose this was your aim in coming here today. To seek some sort of closure.”

“Actually, it had more to do with the fact that you’re the only family I have left in the world.” Adrien jammed his shaking hands into his jacket pockets and scowled at a spot of dingy maroon carpet. “But I guess since I’m already here, we might as well hash this out. The paperwork to get this room booked took days.”

“You speak as though you have better things to do. I hear you’ve _retired_ from modeling. Do you have a job? An apartment?”

“I’m . . . working on it.” Adrien hated how churlish he sounded. Like a surly teenager freshly rebelled. He felt like he ought to be begging for rent money. “Anyway, it’s none of your business what I do with my life. Not anymore.”

His father scoffed. “I’m not surprised you believe such foolish things. You don’t have children of your own.”

“Donating half of your genetic material to me doesn’t actually entitle you to,” Adrien scrambled for what, exactly, he meant to say. He shifted his weight in his chair in a great heave of agitation and finished, “anything. Yeah, um . . . nothing.”

The words felt _extracted_. Like he’d grabbed the edges of them with a pair of pliers and yanked them out. As one would a festering tooth.

Gabriel pressed his lips into a thin line. His fingers threaded together to create an arch out of his hands. He leaned his sparse weight forward, onto his elbows, and pierced Adrien with a look so fondly condescending it immediately turned his mouth into a desert.

“Listen to me, Adrien.” The words were enunciated as sharply as a blade fresh off the grinding stone. “Everything I have done – _everything_ – I did for _you_. For our _family_. Your anger with me is understandable, given the . . . regrettable . . . circumstances. But do not sit there and pretend that you did not singlehandedly destroy any chance we had at seeing your mother again. Do not sit there and pretend that _I_ am the only guilty party in this room.”

And what could Adrien say to such a damning condemnation?

There were no words of protestation inside him. There were no justifications or rebuttals.

Adrien _was_ guilty. He had carried his guilt around his neck like a lodestone for six years, hoping every day that the weight of it would lighten. That he would wake to find himself absolved.

But – as it often went – his father had the truth skewed. Distorted, as if viewing the image of it through a kaleidoscope.

It wasn’t his father that Adrien had betrayed, nor even his mother.

It was Ladybug.

“I suppose you still haven’t found it?” his father continued.

Though Gabriel’s features remained impassive, distant, a spark of insatiability glimmered faintly in the pinprick depths of his pupils.

Adrien unstuck his tongue from the top of his bone-dry mouth and rasped, “No. I never meant to.”

 “Yes. Well. You never did think things through.” With a sigh, Gabriel stood. He meandered to the bookshelf and took out a battered copy of _Winnie the Pooh_. The thinnest of smiles creased his face. “Do you remember when I read this to you? You so loved Piglet.”

“Father –”

“Please.” Gabriel pressed his thumb and forefinger around the bridge of his nose. That age-old indication that he was Fed Up with whatever conversation he was having. “What’s done is done. I’ve had six years to come to terms with your actions. I only wish I had been stronger. Maybe then I could have made you understand.”

“I understand perfectly. I don’t regret my choice.”

“No, of course not. You are, after all, _my_ son.” The wistfulness of his smile morphed into something painful and mocking. “What lengths we Agreste men go to, no? Your tragedy is that you have nothing – absolutely nothing – to show for your devotion. I had twelve years of marriage. And you, Adrien. My golden boy.”

Gabriel shook his head.

“But you? You dismantled your whole life – _our_ lives – for a woman who did not even love you enough to show you what she looked like beneath her mask.”

Adrien’s insides echoed like the corridors of this prison. One endless, ascetic chamber of locked rooms.

The world was a vacuum around him. A tunnel through which he could see the figure of his father standing in his regulation uniform equally as clearly as he could see himself, six years younger, drawing the last bit of Chat Noir’s strength into his limbs to throw the Cat Miraculous into the deepest, widest portion of the gale-stricken Seine.

Cause and effect, choice and consequence.

Whatever alternate reality might have existed had collapsed onto itself in that moment.

Maybe in that other reality, Adrien would be visiting his doting parents for dinner right now.

And his mother would stroke his hair in that feather-soft way and call him her little duckling. And his father would be relaxed and happy, drinking wine and playing his vintage records, breaking into their conversation to share esoteric factoids about this-or-that composer.

And when he left their home, glutted on food and wine and familial love, maybe Adrien would be happy.

Or maybe, even then, he would miss Ladybug.

Across timelines, across realities. Without ever having heard her voice or felt the touch of her fingertips on his cheek. Without knowing she – or someone like her – had ever existed.

Because the space she’d filled had been there even before Adrien slid the Cat Miraculous onto his finger. Meeting her had only been the answer to a question slumbering wordless and primordial inside him.

At least in this reality, he knew why it hurt so fucking much.

“Thirty minutes,” Adrien said, checking his watch. The voice was his but not his. He was watching himself speak from three feet away. He needed to get out of here immediately. “I think that’s all the time I have to spare. I’ve got an appointment.”

“Of course.” His father wasn’t even looking at him anymore. He’d picked up _Winnie the Pooh_ again. The dry, yellowed pages crackled beneath his fingertips. “Try to make it back in a year or two, this time.”

“I’ll try, Father.”

Adrien stood. The pits of his Saint Laurent jacket were beginning to dampen with nervous sweat. His knees appeared to be made of taffy.

Somehow he found himself back in the hall, flanked by the two guards. Somehow he walked without tripping through that nightmarish, vomit-colored labyrinth. Somehow he retrieved his belongings and checked out at the front desk.

As soon as Adrien stepped into the thin white sunlight of early-afternoon, he sat down on the curb and cried.

He cried until his throat burned. Great, heaving, choking sobs that reminded him of his childhood.

The sadness swept over him with the force and devastation of a maelstrom and then dissipated with equivalent swiftness. Adrien sat with the heels of his hands pressed against his puffy eyes, sniffling miserably, for what felt like an hour.

Then he dug through his bag to find his handkerchief, and on the way he noticed that his cell was displaying a missed call and a voice message from Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

“ _Hi – oh, hi, Adrien. Um, this is – Marinette? Sorry, bad at messages, um – totally_ weird _question. Just completely ignore this if you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about. I was wondering, well – would you maybe have . . . borrowed? . . . one of my books the other night? It’s just, I noticed it was missing and – A-Anyway, it’s called – Ha! Well, if you borrowed it, you know! So, um, that’s all! Just wondering! Hope you’re well! Talk to you –”_

At this point the message cut out, presumably because Marinette had either dropped her phone or had exceeded the allowable limit for voice messages.

Adrien wiped his nose on his wrist and pulled up a new text. From his bag, he grabbed a battered copy of _The Coming of Duke Lancaster_ and snapped a photo of its tawdry cover.

In the caption, he wrote:

**+33635124** 15:48

_I thought I would continue our long tradition of book-snatching_

_Don’t worry . . . I will keep the Duke safe : 3_

And despite everything, Adrien thought that things seemed just a little bit brighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, um, I know very little about the French prison system. If anything in this chapter is off, I beg humbly for your collective suspension of disbelief. After all, that's something we Miraculous fans are experts at ;) 
> 
> Seeing as this story is gaining weight and direction, I'll also have to change the story summary. 
> 
> Eventually. Maybe.


	4. Relics

Behind an ornate curio cabinet overflowing with porcelain ballerina figures, Marinette opened her purse and hissed, “Anything, Tikki?”

A middle-aged couple ambled past. The little kwami stifled a yawn until they disappeared into the bowels of the shop.

“Nothing,” Tikki said. The glossy beads of her eyes were bleary with exhaustion. “Can I have another cookie?”

“But it’s only been fifteen minutes. We’re almost out . . .” Marinette chewed on her lip and cast a furtive look around. “You didn’t need so many last weekend.”

“You know I can’t help it . . . I’m s-s-so _tired_.” Another yawn wracked Tikki’s body.

“We’ve got another three shops on the agenda for today. Do you think you can make it?”

“Yes. But Marinette –”

“Don’t say it. Please. . . I already know.”

“I’m sorry.”

Marinette slipped her kwami a cookie in response. She hoped the gesture conveyed the mute despair she felt. And the near-unbearable love . . . there was that, of course.

It took a few minutes to regain her composure. She swung left into the badlands of kitsch kitchen accoutrements and distracted herself with a collection of rooster-shaped egg timers. The variety was impressive. She grabbed a particularly cute one and put it with the rest of her stuff.

When tears didn’t feel quite so inevitable, she made her way back to the front of the shop. Madame Francesca had her nose buried in a book about embroidery, a bowl of fat purple grapes perched at her elbow.

“And what is the verdict today, my dear?” the shopkeeper asked without taking her eyes from the page. “Have you found your replica at last?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Maybe next Saturday. I have a –”

“- good feeling about it, yes?” Francesca ate a grape and looked up. “You always do.”

Francesca seemed a good sort, if a little unnerving. Her deep chocolate eyes were too intelligent for Marinette to feel at ease in her presence. Her round and compact body gave the impression of softness, but there was a certain steeliness in her comportment . . .  a ruthlessness of posture that made Marinette wonder whether the shopkeeper had ever served in the military. Or possibly a gang.

They didn’t speak about their personal lives, though. Their professional relationship worked best when neither of them pried. In all the time they’d been performing this charade, Francesca had never so much as questioned Marinette’s suspicious dedication to this seemingly banal search. 

“I did find this,” Marinette continued brightly. She placed the egg timer and a bundle of clothing onto the cluttered counter. “It honestly _never_ ceases to amaze me, the things people give away. This shawl? Vintage Rykiel – from the seventies! I’ve already got so many ideas for it . . .”

Francesca rooted through the pile for price labels and started punching the sticky buttons on her antiquated cash register. “I remember when those got brought in. Estate sale. That’s usually how it goes.”

“Oh . . .”

“Rooster’s cute, though.” Francesca tapped on the plastic beak affixed via spring to the painted avian face. It wobbled comically. “You know a friend of mine is opening another shop down the way. I gave him the details of the ring. Hope you don’t mind. Lorenzo specializes in jewelry.”

“No – No, of course I don’t mind! I appreciate you thinking of me.”

“Yes, well.” Francesca popped another grape into her mouth. “Six years is a long time to be hunting for a piece of junk. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“I hope so, too.”

The shopkeeper fixed a narrow, searching gaze on Marinette’s face. But if she found anything written there – a tell, a resemblance – she said or did nothing to indicate it. 

Francesca took Marinette’s payment and went back to her book. “Until next Saturday, Marinette.”

Marinette bid her adieu and stepped out into the bustling street.

The day was overcast and chilly, but the air had that delicious _spring_ ness to it: roots and soil and the carbon exhalations of plant matter.

Rebirth. That’s what it smelled like. The reawakening of slumbering, inexorable forces. This time of year always made her hopeful.   

She placed a shaking hand over the clasp of her purse.

It had to be soon. She was running out of time.

The staccato vibration of her phone drew Marinette back from the black pit of hopelessness yawning terrible and hungry inside her. There was, as always, the briefest pulsation in her heart before she saw the caller ID.

But it was Alya calling, not Adrien.

Marinette answered eagerly. “Hey! Are you –?”

“I’ve got a hit!” Alya’s voice was breathless with excitement and, from the sound of it, a full-tilt jog through the streets. “It’s a long-shot, but old Martin said his son got in some – Oh, excuse me! – got in some new items yesterday night. Superfan – tons of memorabilia: fanart, posters, figurines, the works. There’s a ring with it. _His_ ring.”

“What’s the location?”

“I’ll text you the details. Listen, I know it’s unlikely, but . . .”

“I’ll take _anything_ right now. I swear I could kiss you.”

“Don’t make promise you have no intention of keeping, Mari,” Alya teased. “Christ, we need to get back into jogging. I am _way_ outta shape.”

“Let’s talk about our physiques later, okay? I’ll see you soon.”

They disconnected, and within seconds the promised text came through. Marinette scanned the address with her heart in her throat.

It had been over a year since the last lead. A _year_.

This had to be it. It _had_ to be.

Fate, or the gods, or whatever stupid quantum impulse ruled the cosmos – whatever It was, It couldn’t let things end like _this_.

Not this slow and agonizing decline into impotence.

Not this ragged, wild-animal longing raking claws forever down the chambers of her heart.

Marinette blinked away tears and ran for the nearest bus stop.

Twenty-five minutes later, she arrived panting and hectic at a shop so tiny, it almost disappeared from sight when one moved five feet in either direction.

Overstuffed racks of teetering book piles sat outside. A young girl with a shaved head was on her hands and knees, squinting at the ruined spines. The display windows out front were so filthy, you could hardly see through them.

Auspicious signs. A place like this had history; it had mystique. It was a little smelly. It was exactly the sort of liminal space at which one might expect to find an ancient magical relic. Such a discovery would only be thematically appropriate.

The tinny tinkle of a bell chimed out as Marinette entered. A gauzy film of fine particulate hung suspended in the air; dust covered almost every surface. A permanent sneeze settled in the bridge of Marinette’s nose and lurked as she crept through the narrow, cluttered walkways.

There seemed to be more rooms crammed inside the space than architecture – no, physics – allowed. Marinette got turned around in one filled exclusively with jars of pickled animals, tripped over a box of antique telephones at least four times, and then was finally spat out into a low-ceilinged hallway consisting of one Alya and at least fifty copies of Marinette’s face, masked.

And _his_ face. Chat’s.

Smirking with that easy satisfaction he’d always possessed. The sharp canines glinting in the camera flash, the black claws extended and posed with such effortless flair. The whites of his eyes washed in the spectral green that always made him look half-feral, so much more given over to his transformation than she had ever been.

Would there ever be a moment that she did not miss him like this? When seeing the likeness of him did not fill her with such ferocious agony?

“Here it is,” Alya whispered, then winced. “This place _sucks_. It’s so creepy. Why am I whispering? It isn’t a library. There aren’t _signs_ saying I should. I think sinister forces are at work.”

Marinette wasn’t listening. Her vision had narrowed into a single, transfixed line.

Beside a lovingly carved-and-painted figurine of Chat Noir was a black velvet pillow. A schismatic pattern of reflective green thread zigzagged along its edges.

And on that pillow, his ring. His Miraculous.

Before she even touched it, Marinette knew that it was all wrong.

Though the replica was exact down to the finest detail, it lacked the essence of him. His energy – the ordered, unscrupulous, geometric loveliness of destruction – was missing.

This ring didn’t live. It wasn’t dormant.

It was just a hunk of metal.

Marinette licked her cracked lips. To be absolutely certain, she opened her purse and prodded Tikki into some semblance of wakefulness.

Tikki shook her head sadly when Marinette presented the ring to her.

“That’s a fake,” Tikki confirmed. “Plagg isn’t there.”

Alya looked gutted. “I’m sorry, Marinette. I really hoped . . .”

“I know.” Marinette scratched at her nose. “Thank you. Honestly, it could have . . . it could have been the one.”

“Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here. I need a sandwich and some liquor.”

“You and me both.”

They popped into the nearest bistro and ate their fill – which, in the clutch of disappointment, was quite a lot. Contrary to their usual M.O., Marinette was the one who ended up toasted. She ordered straight vodka presented on a flat piece of board still smelling like tree sap. Three little shot glasses filled to the brim, downed one after the other.

“Whoa,” Alya said, though not without a measure of respect. “Maybe slow it down? It’s not even dark.”

“I can’t. I’m having an episode.”

“Do we need to leave?”

“ _No_.” Marinette covered her face with her hands, afraid of what her own expression was betraying. “God, I miss him _so_ _much_. Sometimes I feel like it’ll just . . . just crack me open, like an egg. Egg timer. Um, look.”

She dragged out her purchase and presented it to Alya, who appeared very unimpressed. Marinette set the timer for five seconds. When the buzzer chimed, it crowed and squawked. A handful of guests paused in conversation to shoot annoyed glances their way.

“That’s heinous,” Alya said.

“Yes, I love it.”

Alya sighed and sipped at her glass of red wine. “How long does Tikki say you have left?”

“She doesn’t know exactly. A few months. The less I transform, the faster she fades . . . but how _can_ I transform, after – ?”

“The Incident?” Alya finished darkly.

They glared in opposite directions.

“I can’t put on my suit when – when there’s even the slightest _chance_ that my kwami will hiccup and cause a temporal anomaly in the middle of downtown Paris. It swallowed _cars_. And I couldn’t make them come back!”

“I agree with your statement wholeheartedly. Let’s not do that. Ever again.”

Marinette groaned. She dropped her head down onto her outstretched arms with a heavy _thunk_.

“It’s not her fault. She’s a god of creation. That’s _raw_ chaos, undiluted. With no counterbalance . . . I mean, it’s been so long since the ring was active. They aren’t supposed to exist independently; it’s against the _law_.”

“Oh, the same law that keeps Tikki from just telling you Chat’s stupid name? _That_ law? Because I’d like to have words with whatever jacked-up deity chiseled those onto the stone of eternity. If this is how it is, there should be some – some _recourse_. Some failsafe! This can’t be the only time it’s gotten lost since, what, the beginning of humanity?”

“Fu claimed that the talismans attract each other; that they have a sort of magnetism. I thought that meant they would gravitate back together over time. I thought it meant . . .” Marinette took a deep, restorative breath. She pressed her cool palms flat against her flushed cheeks. “But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this _is_ fate, and Chat and I ran our course.”

Alya did not contest this statement, which only amplified Marinette’s misery.

“Listen, I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now,” she said softly, “but can we discuss, like, something very glaringly obvious? Namely, that Chat Noir . . . well, that he’s had every opportunity to find _you_? And hasn’t?”

“You don’t know that. Neither of us really knows what happened that night.”

“You read the message he left with Fu, Marinette. You memorized it. It wasn’t interpretive.”

“ _You_ read it, too! ‘ _I’m so sorry. I did what I had to do to stop him. Please forgive me.’_ Do those sound like the words of – of a mentally stable individual? Do they sound like _Chat Noir_ to you?”

“No, they don’t. That’s my point.”

 “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just, I don’t know!” Alya tossed up her hands. “Maybe he wanted to live a normal life. Maybe he had enough of it after _four years_ of fighting the same fights over and over again.”

It wasn’t like this was the first time something similar had occurred to Marinette. The extent to which she had analyzed the details of that final, fateful battle was enough to earn her a doctorate on the subject. She could frame it in elegant cherry wood and hang it on her wall: _Doctor of Science in Unexplained Supernatural Defections._

Nobody – _nobody_ – had spent as much time wondering as she had.

For months, _years_ , she had turned over his last words in her mind. Until they had ceased to take on the shape of words at all; until all she heard was the raw cadence of his voice and all she saw was the shape of his mouth as it moved.

And it had been so normal, their parting. On one side of the river, a swirling vortex of water rising from the Seine; on the other, the air crackling with static as lightning splintered across the blackened sky.

“ _I’ll take the right, M’Lady. I’m feeling electric.”_

“ _Be careful not to singe that tail of yours.”_

No solemn declarations of loyalty, no clasped hands or grim looks of resigned determination.

Just a cheeky twirl of his tail, the tip of his pink tongue pressed playful against one sharp canine. The nimble, near-languid retreat.

Sometimes she still dreamt of it: Those last glimpses of him vaulting through the torrential rain, his suit slick and reflective as an inkblot.

Marinette feared she would be chasing him along that riverbank for the rest of her life.

But worse – immeasurably worse – was the prospect of the chase ending. To find herself standing in the pressing, sightless fog and to know in her marrow that she had failed.  

“I can’t stop looking,” Marinette said. “It doesn’t matter why he did it. Not really. I just – I _can’t_ let him go without trying.”

Alya sighed and patted Marinette’s limp, outstretched hand. “I know. I don’t _get_ it, but I’m with you. Okay?”

“Thank you.”

“Sure. Besides, if you _do_ find Chat Noir, it’ll only skyrocket my old blog back to international renown. My helping you is borderline self-serving.”

“Oh, keep telling yourself that. You’re as soft as ice cream on hot asphalt, Alya Césaire.”

Alya wrinkled her nose at the imagery. “I prefer to imagine myself as a toasted marshmallow; it favors my coppery complexion.”

Later that night, long after the two friends had parted around hasty plans to view an art installation at an up-and-coming café, Marinette wandered the streets surrounding her studio.

Her inebriation had faded to a mildly annoying buzz just behind her eye sockets. The disappointment of the day settled into her breast like a blackened seed and threatened to grow thorny roots.

Never since those first petrifying, exhilarating days as Ladybug had she felt so . . . out of control. So hopelessly over her head.

Losing her powers frightened her. Even knowing she could survive and prosper without them, she still clung to Ladybug desperately, unwilling to let go.

It would all be different if Chat hadn’t disappeared. If this had been a mutual choice, a simultaneous laying down of arms as she had _always_ known must one day occur, it wouldn’t be so traumatizing.

Marinette’s life was rich with blessings; she had passion and love independent of her status as a superheroine. Being Ladybug was . . . incredible, but it didn’t define _her_ anymore than her career defined her. She’d spent decades building up her own identity, parsing through emotions and interests and morals until she established a sense of personhood that felt noble and authentic.

That bright core of Marinette would remain intact even if she did revert full-time into her unspectacular self. This was something she had always strived for, even at the halcyon summit of her power, and it was something she was fiercely proud of achieving.

But losing Chat for good? Knowing there’d be no possibility of finding him without the shining beacon of her Miraculous to guide him home?

That would be more devastating than she could even bear to imagine.

If she could just _see_ him one last time. Even if he never wanted to don his suit again; even if he told her that he’d moved on from their double life, found himself something real and worth living at one-hundred percent.

It would be enough just to know that he was safe and happy.

Or, no. Not enough. Who was she trying to fool?

Her heart would break.

But at least there would be the possibility of mending it. At least then she would have a form of closure.

A few months: that was all the time she had left to make it happen.

No fight had ever felt as daunting as this one.

But as with all the other battles, Marinette Dupain-Cheng had no intention of losing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive! And still interested in telling this story. 
> 
> I'm playing around with some lore in this one; obviously, this could be - or become - at odds with canon. But I tried my best to think about the nature of the talismans: how they counterbalance one another, what "creation" and "destruction" would really mean, and how they would function when one or the other became compromised. Hopefully it's intriguing enough to forgive any canon-divergence that may occur! As always, there's still more to be revealed ; 3


End file.
